Wagner James Au / New World Notes

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Could You Run Second Life on Steam Deck? Would You Want To?

Interesting new comment from Tad Noodle and Jerom Franzic on an older post on Second Life's upcoming iOS app. How about Second Life on consoles? Specifically, Valve's Steam Deck, set for release this December. (Trailer above.)

As Mr. Noodle wonders aloud:

I wonder if Second Life would run decently on a Steam Deck? I watched a video with my husband and they said you could use 3rd party gaming apps on it, since it's basically a small PC.

 That sounds right. And Mr. Franzic expands:

Steam Deck SL

[T]he Steam Deck's hardware could easily support the Linux versions of third party Second Life viewers. If I was in the market for the Steam Deck, I'd try Kokua or Cool VL Viewer on it. Probably Kokua, as I can easily run my Xbox One gamepad with that. Firestorm should also work, several users here have already mentioned running that via Steam.

Interesting idea, though caveat emptor and all that: I wouldn't recommend buying a Steam Deck with the sole or main purpose of running Second Life on it, because there may be some technical hurdles we're not aware of. It would also be a limited experience versus PC/Mac: The Deck comes with a small keyboard, but using in-world voice or Steam Chat is probably preferable. Or alternately you should be able to use the Deck as a PC, hooking it up to a standard mouse/keyboard/monitor.

Speaking of Steam, I wonder why Linden Lab hasn't yet officially published Second Life to Steam, as was once announced nearly a decade ago. It's possible Valve got a good look at all the Adult content in SL and slammed the breaks. But that wouldn't necessarily be a deal breaker any more, as Steam doesn't allow Adult games (with limitations).

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One response to “Could You Run Second Life on Steam Deck? Would You Want To?”

  1. Jerom Franzic Avatar
    Jerom Franzic

    Yes, I agree with your points. No, I’m not Mr. Franzic… my SL persona is female. (The RL guy running her show… that’s a different story LOL, let’s not go there but he does adore his SL creation quite a bit, she is a lovely, benevolent matriarch* of sorts ^_^)
    My only issue with running SL at all on the steam deck is the screen. It’s too small for SL, and I’d be reduced to keeping the viewing distance to about 96m because of that limitation. I’d miss out on all the intricate detailing of lots of things, especially when I lounge on a nice sim and people watch for a few minutes unless I’m constantly using the zoom mode from the camera movement HUD.
    Unless SL is optimized for viewing on a smaller screen… I do recall trying Lumiya a few times but it’s useless these days. My BoM avis don’t look great on it + it’s hard to move around in world when I use Lumiya.
    Thanks for referring to my comment, I appreciate it.
    (*matriarch to her alts, not anyone else ATM)

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